The importance of religious experience
Part 6: Whatever they are, we should cherish our religious experiences – and be willing to act on them!
I am conscious that – having laid out an explanation that rests just on natural, physical explanations – why should we bother introducing the supernatural, metaphysical explanation of God? Partly, this is in an attempt to do justice to the depth and strength of the experience described as “meeting with God”. However, I do return to the key thought, considered under the “just a psychological effect of the mind” option that the practical effect of religious experiences under this understanding is indistinguishable from the traditional understanding of a real encounter with God. Having considered briefly this second option, we reaffirm again that the experience in the life of the believer of having a relationship with God is unchanged whether the cause is a real meeting with God or just a psychological cause.
Perhaps then the problem stems from those who want to dismiss the significance of religious experiences because they choose to understand them as arising purely from psychological causes – as though this somehow made them invalid, or, at least, they certainly want to refuse to consider that religious experiences come from God – because that cannot be proven.
We said all along that the religious experiences definitely exist and the issue is simply whether they are caused by God or by a psychological cause. However, we seem to have discovered that it doesn’t really matter what causes them – the effect of the religious experiences is just the same. Of course, this sounds counter-intuitive: it must make a difference whether they are caused by God or our own minds. Our decision on this point determines whether we believe that God exists or not, so that is a fundamental decision on what constitutes reality: just physical entities or physical and metaphysical entities. It also affects -and this practicality might be the major factor – what we do about these experiences. Those who believe they are a sign that you have met God are able to take them seriously and act upon them, while those who believe they have a purely psychological cause are inclined to dismiss them or, at least, “to park” the experience somewhere in the corner of their minds, with a label attached, “That was an odd experience. Nice, and I wonder what caused it. But no action required”. As a result, they take no action in response to the experience. While others embrace it as the foundation stone to build a new spiritual life in relationship with God. Now that’s quite a difference!
Spiritual Devotion 